When we think about stress and anxiety, we often lump them together and sometimes use the words interchangeably. But according to the National Institutes of Health, “stress is the physical or mental response to an external cause,” while anxiety is the “body’s reaction to stress,” (whether or not a perceived threat is real). While too much of it is a legitimate concern, stress is not necessarily the evil we make it out to be.
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What if we were to flip the script and choose to view stress as simply a normal physiological response to changes in our lives? Think about it: Stress keeps us alert and motivated. Without it, we would simply sit around and do nothing. As stress physiologist Rebecca Heiss, PhD, points out, when people list the things that they are most proud of in life, most of these things result from periods of high stress. She says, “Without stress, we don’t have a meaningful, purposeful life. You want stress, you just don’t want stress.”
Teenagers and Stress
Many of us are overwhelmed by the stress in our lives, and worry about how stress is impacting our teens. (You could say we spend time stressing about stress). And our worries about our kids is valid. Heiss says, “Our research from last year showed that this generation is absolutely different when it comes to stress: they are off-the-charts anxious.”
While teens have many of the same stressors as adults, such as uncertainty about relationships and school/work struggles, they don’t know how to handle them well, and one of the reasons is that they are more susceptible to stressful stimuli. Heiss says there are several reasons for this.
- Their adolescent brains aren’t fully formed, so they can’t process the fear response the same way adults do.
- They lack perspective; with relatively little life experience, every stressor feels like a major life event.
- Physiologically, their hormones exacerbate the stress in their lives. She says that their fluctuating hormones make them “feel very much out of control, for maybe the first time in their life.
- Their communication skills aren’t yet developed, so they don’t know how to ask for help or explain their problems/feelings.
And this all exacerbates their stress. I think all of us can relate: when we feel stressed out, the thing that we want most is control, and teenagers have very little control in their life. They are told where they need to be, what they can wear, what time they need to be home or at school, etc. They often don’t have control over their emotions or even their own bodies. They feel anxious as a result.
To make things worse, teens often don’t understand why they are so stressed. According to Heiss, the biggest thing parents can do to help their teens manage stress is to model behavior that shows them how to deal with it. “We don’t recognize how much our own behavior affects other people around us,” she says. “We come home all stressed out, then our teenagers get on our nerves and exacerbate the issue.”
Instead of letting stress command your life, Heiss recommends we use stress as a springboard and have it work for us instead of bringing us down.
How Parents Can Help Teens Manage Stress
1. Name the “tigers”
In her book Springboard: Transform Stress to Work for You, Heiss refers to stressful stimuli as “tigers” and recommends we start by naming the things in our lives that cause stress and then lean into them.
She offers this script: “Here are the things today that happened, that made me feel out of control, that made me feel anxious.” Just naming these tigers helps. Then follow up. Ask your teenager, “What is one small step that you can take?” and model [how to do] that.” Left to their own devices, many teens may choose to avoid facing these stressors by, for example, turning to vaping, alcohol, drugs or sex. Talking about stressful situations with our teens will help them learn to face them head on.
Related: Warning Signs Your Teen May Be Hiding Alcohol Use
2. Evaluate the literal danger of a situation.
Ask your teen to evaluate if what they are experiencing is life-threatening or likely to cause bodily harm? Point out that stress releases hormones and causes physical reactions – the fight or flight response — even when we are not in physical danger. Putting these very real feelings in perspective can help your teen calm their nervous system and determine their next moves. You might also suggest self-care activities to help with self-regulation. (How to Help Your Teen Reframe Emotions: Shifting Anxiety into Excitement)
3. Reframe self-talk.
Instead of telling your teen to “calm down” when they are faced with a challenging but scary situation (such as giving a speech or solo performance), encourage them to “get excited.” Lean into the stress and channel that energy in a positive way. When seen as excitement, the adrenaline rush brought on by stress can help them push past thoughts of potential failure when trying something new. (You may also like to read: How to Help Your Teen Reframe Emotions: Shifting Anxiety into Excitement)
4. Encourage a three minute “worry dump.”
Give them time to vent and name everything they are worried about, without interruption or judgement. When they are done, empower them by asking them to suggest one small thing they can do to move forward. Alternatively, ask “What’s the worst that can happen?” Sometimes verbalizing “the worst” makes it seem not so bad after all.
5. Fake it till you make it.
Heiss is a strong proponent of acting ‘as if.’ She encourages parents to remind teens “that everybody around you is also acting ‘as if.’ Not only at the teenage level, people of all ages struggle with feeling secure. If you can throw your shoulders back and put a smile on your face, your anxiety doesn’t disappear, your stressors are still there, your anxieties are still there, AND your brain gets a second signal which is ‘Maybe we’re excited?’”
She admits that this may seem weird, but “our brain is looking to our body for what is called somatic feedback, bodily feedback. And if we [have our] shoulders back, smile on, acting as if we are confident, our body actually produces more hormones of confidence and happiness. We begin to settle into that pattern, even though we are still anxious.”
Your teen look at you like you lost your mind, but Heiss advises parents to persist. Keep modeling and sharing these ideas, or even better, find a way to plant the seed with their friends. And the experts agree: even if they don’t admit it, teens care what their parents think.
“The challenge with teenagers is they’re not logical, you can argue all day long, you can show them the evidence, you can show them the research and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’” says Heiss. “Take that ‘Yeah whatever’ with a grain of salt. They may be ‘Oh whatevering’ you, but they also may be trying it on their own quietly. That’s sort of the way teenagers operate.”
Remember that managing stress is hard for everyone.
Heiss worries that she might come across Pollyannish and is quick to say, “Everything isn’t always good. Life does suck sometimes. Absolutely, express it. Own it. AND move through it. There is a massive empowerment in recognizing that feelings are feelings and [that] they are important to feel. Absolutely dive into them and feel them, AND use them. It is okay to feel angry and upset.”
She says that one of the biggest challenges is labelling these feelings. “We’re bad at this, because we’ve been taught: Don’t be angry. Don’t feel that. Rather than labelling stress good [or] bad, [instead say] this is energy that I feel. What is the healthiest way for me to express it? What is the story I want to tell?” It’s okay to express your feelings by screaming and punching and kicking in a room by yourself where you’re safe or sharing them with really good friends.
“Stress is a feature; it’s not a bug. It’s telling you something. Don’t try and get rid of the thing that is telling you something important. Understand what it is telling you. Really feel that thing so you can move toward it, away from it, alongside it, in the direction that you need to move. Avoiding any emotion only exacerbates it.”
Looking for more information on helping your teen manage stress? Check out this book: Springboard: Transform Stress to Work for You.
Parenting teens and tweens is hard, but you don’t have to do it alone. These articles may help:
11 Powerful TED Talks to Help Teens Feel More Confident About Who They Are
Five Reasons Why You Should Let Your Teen Struggle
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